Economic geography mainly deals with how economic activities are distributed in a region. Several aspects affect the distribution and include culture and social organization within a region. Retail businesses are small in size and several factors favor the small businesses over large scale businesses.
Looking at the effect of cultural and social geography on the distribution of retail businesses, it is clear that some social and cultural aspects favor the small businesses. One good example is the religion in an area. For example, in a region where the Muslims are a majority over Christians, pork business will remain small scale (retail). This illustrates how culture can influence market distribution and outreach. An example of such a region is Pakistan. Most of the people are Muslims thus Christian related products like bibles and crucifixes are minimal. This is mainly because the number of available customers is small making the businesses dealing with such products to remain small. Pork consumption in such a country is minimal since if rearing of pigs is marginalized if not extinct.
Market expansion.
Influence from other larger business entities.
Seek for new markets and resources.
These reasons have led to establishment of several international retail business entities. On top of these reasons, a retail business entity must have certain characteristics for it to be fit for internationalization. These characteristics may be outlined as follows.
Compact and widely available raw materials.
Variety in flavor making the retail products best fit the locality of production.
Enough capital for international dealings making the size of the business to remain small only for structural reasons and not any other reason like limited capital.
